At the head of Mr. Cooper's cañon are broken and jutting sandstone walls, over three hundred feet high, draped with mosses and ferns and all manner of vines. I saw the dainty thalictrum, with its clover-like leaves, standing in thickets there, fresh and green, its blossoms nearly out on the first day of February. Looking down from these heights over the whole of the ranch, one sees for the first time the completeness of its beauty. The eucalyptus belts have been planted in every instance solely with a view to utility,—either as wind-breaks to keep off known special wind-currents from orchard or grain-field, or to make use of gorge sides too steep for other cultivation. Yet, had they been planted with sole reference to landscape effects, they could not better have fallen into place. Even out to the very ocean edge the groves run, their purples and greens melting into the purples and greens of the sea when it is dark and when it is sunny blue,—making harmonious lines of color, leading up from it to the soft grays of the olive and the bright greens of the walnut orchards and wheat-fields. When the almond trees are in bloom, the eucalyptus belts are perhaps most superb of all, with their dark spears and plumes waving above and around the white and rosy acres.
The leading industry of this ranch is to be the making of olive oil. Already its oil is known and sought; and to taste it is a revelation to palates accustomed to the compounds of rancid cocoanut and cotton-seed with which the markets are full. The olive industry will no doubt ultimately be one of the great industries of the whole country: vast tracts of land which are not suitable or do not command water enough for orange, grape, or grain culture, affording ample support to the thrifty and unexacting olive. The hill-slopes around San Diego, and along the coast line for forty or fifty miles up, will no doubt one day be as thickly planted with olives as is the Mediterranean shore. Italy's olive crop is worth thirty million dollars annually, and California has as much land suited to the olive as Italy has.
The tree is propagated from cuttings, begins to bear the fourth year, and is in full bearing by the tenth or twelfth. One hundred and ten can be planted to an acre. Their endurance is enormous. Some of the orchards planted by the friars at the missions over a hundred years ago are still bearing, spite of scores of years of neglect; and there are records of trees in Nice having borne for several centuries.
The process of oil-making is an interesting spectacle, under Mr. Cooper's oak trees. The olives are first dried in trays with slat bottoms, tiers upon tiers of these being piled in a kiln over a furnace fire. Then they are ground between stone rollers, worked by huge wheels, turned by horse-power. The oil, thus pressed out, is poured into huge butts or tanks. Here it has to stand and settle three or four months. There are faucets at different levels in these butts, so as to draw off different layers of oil. After it has settled sufficiently, it is filtered through six layers of cotton batting, then through one of French paper, before it is bottled. It is then of a delicate straw color, with a slight greenish tint,—not at all of the golden yellow of the ordinary market article. That golden yellow and the thickening in cold are sure proofs of the presence of cotton-seed in oil,—the pure oil remaining limpid in a cold which will turn the adulterated oils white and thick. It is estimated that an acre of olives in full bearing will pay fifteen hundred dollars a year if pickled, and two thousand dollars a year made into oil.
In observing the industries of South California and studying their history, one never escapes from an undercurrent of wonder that there should be any industries or industry there. No winter to be prepared for; no fixed time at which anything must be done or not done at all; the air sunny, balmy, dreamy, seductive, making the mere being alive in it a pleasure; all sorts of fruits and grains growing a-riot, and taking care of themselves,—it is easy to understand the character, or, to speak more accurately, the lack of character, of the old Mexican and Spanish Californians.
There was a charm in it, however. Simply out of sunshine, there had distilled in them an Orientalism as fine in its way as that made in the East by generations of prophets, crusaders, and poets.
With no more curiosity than was embodied in "Who knows?"—with no thought or purpose for a future more defined than "Some other time; not to-day,"—without greeds, and with the unlimited generosities of children,—no wonder that to them the restless, inquisitive, insatiable, close-reckoning Yankee seemed the most intolerable of all conquerors to whom they could surrender. One can fancy them shuddering, even in heaven, as they look down to-day on his colonies, his railroads, his crops,—their whole land humming and buzzing with his industries.
One questions also whether, as the generations move on, the atmosphere of life in the sunny empire they lost will not revert more and more to their type, and be less and less of the type they so disliked. Unto the third and fourth generation, perhaps, pulses may keep up the tireless Yankee beat; but sooner or later there is certain to come a slacking, a toning down, and a readjusting of standards and habits by a scale in which money and work will not be the highest values. This is "as sure as that the sun shines," for it is the sun that will bring it about.
FATHER JUNIPERO AND HIS WORK.
A SKETCH OF THE FOUNDATION, PROSPERITY, AND RUIN OF THE FRANCISCAN MISSIONS IN CALIFORNIA.
I.